Jon Worth

Analysis

Decarbonise rail: diagrams, battery trains, and a visit to Stadler's plant in Pankow

Rail might correctly consider itself the greenest transport mode, but there is nevertheless plenty railways can do to decarbonise - not least by doing away with diesel as the primary fuel to power trains on non-electrified lines. The question then comes: how best to do that? Anyone who follows the

Analysis

A consortium to order night train carriages?

At the start Trains for Europe had two major questions: how could the European Union organise the procurement of a fleet of night train carriages, and how many carriages would you even need to run enough lines for which there is a market in Europe? We're still working

Analysis

Open Letter - Trains to Kaunas

Back in January a post on the TrainTracks.eu blog by Sebastian Wilken caught my eye - the post rated how easy it was to get to the three European Capitals of Culture this year (Esch ??, Novi Sad ?? and Kaunas ??) by train. I can confirm the trip to Novi Sad

Analysis

Reflections on rail advocacy in EU politics

That the European Union needs to get more passengers and freight onto its railways is a no-brainer. Europe has a dense network of railways, with a lot of them in reasonable condition, a decent percentage electrified, and plenty of lines allowing trains to run at a good speed. With roads

Analysis

What Germany needs to do about night trains

The governments of France, Italy and Sweden are actively thinking about how they can renew night train networks in those countries. Austrian Railways ÖBB, notably in partnership with Swiss Railways SBB, is investing heavily in new night train carriages and proposing to open new routes - and is backed by

Analysis

Where we stand with the need to order new night trains: the EU, every government, every operator assessed

When I started Trains for Europe in mid-2021, the demand was that the European Union organises the procurement of a fleet of new night trains. Now - 8 months on - it is time to take stock of what has(n't) happened in the interim. We started with

Analysis

#CrossBorderRail - crossing every border in the EU you can cross by train

This entire blog post has been superceded by a separate campaign website! Please consult that first! When, in a quiet moment late last year, I wondered what had come of the missing rail links Michael Cramer had proposed to fix when he was a MEP, I could not have known

Analysis

Night trains to/from Berlin

We've been invited to present at an event in February about night train services to and from Berlin, the city where our campaign is based. That has led to some interesting reflections - rather than seeing the complete picture of night trains in Europe, what would work from

Analysis

Skyscanner for rail? Before we can even build such a thing we need a European rail timetable

In as far as there is a debate about the problems of cross border railways in Europe, one question crops up over and over: "why is there no Skyscanner for rail?" If one website can aggregate all the flights in Europe and allow a customer to compare prices

Analysis

Where is the ambition in the provision of international night trains?

When I started the Trains for Europe project a little over 6 months ago, I had identified the key problem - that the main barrier to scaling up night trains in Europe was the absence of the trains themselves. To get more night trains onto Europe's rails, someone

Analysis

If something is incorrect we should not repeat it, even if we want it

In the wider scheme of the ills of modern communication, this was a pretty minor one. In Time Out's "22 best new things to do in the world in 2022" this was at number 17: 17. Ride new Regiojet sleeper train all the way across Europe

Austria

A look ahead - what's in store for night trains in Europe in 2022?

It's a new year and it's time to look forward. Here at Trains for Europe we've looked into the crystal ball and in this post are going to have a look at what's coming up in the next 12 months in the

Analysis

Revisiting Michael Cramer's "Missing Links" 6 years on - meagre progress

Back in 2015, Michael Cramer MEP published his list of missing links in the European railway network. Cramer - a politician from the Greens-EFA group and chair of the TRAN Committee of the European Parliament at the time - had the idea that smaller, cheaper, lower scale cross border railway

Analysis

European Commission action plan to boost long distance and cross-border passenger rail - a glass half full

Last week the European Commission published its long awaited "Action plan to boost long distance and cross-border passenger rail" - you can download the 18 page PDF document here, and there is also a summary of the proposals here. The action plan was based on a much longer

Guides

The longest train journey in the world - in 2021

IMPORTANT : this blog post is correct as of 15 December 2021, and all the text below is unchanged since then. At that time two borders - Russia to China, and China to Laos - could not be crossed due to COVID. The outbreak of war in Ukraine has also meant

European Union

Djebbari announces a "Trains for France" - a missed opportunity

Plans for the rejuvenation of night trains in France are proceeding - the news this morning from France's Minister of Transport is that new routes with new rolling stock will be launched in the period 2026-2030. You can read more about the plans in Ouest France here. But

Austria

#BerlinBledBerlin trip report

I am writing this blog post at the end of a 5 day trip from Berlin to Bled in Slovenia by train and back, through the 4th wave of the COVID pandemic and crossing Austria in lockdown. I've been tweeting about the trip as I went along on

Analysis

#ZugGegenFlug - it's on, but not quite yet...

Further to my previous blog post about the idea, I am now happy to confirm that the #ZugGegenFlug experiment is on! I've partnered with multi-modal travel booking platform Omio who, as well as supporting with ideation and planning (thanks Emily, Boris and team), will be providing the tickets

Guides

Modernising a Dahon - MINI folding bicycle

Just under 2 years ago I acquired a 2001 Birdy folding bicycle, and explained here how I upgraded it to more modern standards. Since then the Birdy has accompanied me on many business trips, especially to smaller cities with good bike infrastructure where bike hire is either expensive or non-existent

Belgium

Subsidise night train services? Or sort out the market conditions to enable night trains to run?

Back in September 2020, Swedish transport authority Trafikverket sought to award contracts to run two international night trains from summer 2022 - Stockholm-Hamburg and Malmö-Bruxelles. Sweden's state owned railway firm SJ won the contract to run Stockholm-Hamburg (with rolling stock provided by RDC), but no bids were received

Analysis

#ZugGegenFlug - an idea

Mark Smith and Simon Calder are having a race today. Mark is taking the new Lumo train from London to Edinburgh, and Simon is racing him - on a flight. It's a bit of fun, but with a serious purpose - as passengers often underestimate the time it

Analysis

What the European Commission ought to do: an annual index of cross border rail in Europe

When you travel by rail Europe-wide as much as I do (and also spend as much time debating rail policy in Europe as I do when I am not travelling), you end up with an overwhelming impression: cross border rail does not work as well as train travel within one

Austria

The next problem for night trains in Netherlands: the locomotives are too heavy (or the track too unstable)

We've previously examined the headaches finding rolling stock (i.e. carriages) for the new Zürich - Amsterdam NightJet that will run from December this year, but now another problem has come to light - the locomotives, and specifically that they are too heavy. We've been pointed

Germany

How to book a Stockholm-Hamburg train ticket, using the Stockholm-Malmö night train

*** WARNING: I have never done this personally! Attempt this at your own risk! *** Anders Peterson, Associate Professor in traffic systems at Linköping University in Sweden, posed an interesting question on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andpe41/status/1448343509740789767 Anders even pointed out that Swedish rail company SJ has been talking about

Analysis

Europe's empty publicity train - the Connecting Europe Express - reaches the end of the line

On Thursday 7th October the EU Year of Rail "Connecting Europe Express" reaches its final stop in Paris after a month criss-crossing Europe. If ever a tweet summed up the emptiness, the hollowness, of this train, it was this by Community of European Railways' Yann Seimandi: https: